Pat McIntosh - The Rough Collier

‘Had you talked about it at all before that?’ Alys asked.

‘The old witch wouldny have it discussed,’ said Phemie. Bel tossed her head in disagreement, and Phemie added, ‘No that that stopped Raffie, o’ course, but Joanna was in here most of the time, so she never heard him, did you?’

‘No, I never,’ agreed Joanna wearily. ‘I tellt your mother how Bel brought us the flask that morning and how I put it in his scrip and never saw it again. Nor I never want to see it again neither,’ she added, with a flicker of that spirit she had shown before. ‘I’ll sell it and give the money to the poor. He was never an easy man, but he was my man, I never wanted him dead.’

‘Did she believe you?’ demanded Phemie.

‘I’ve no notion.’

This is getting me nowhere, thought Alys. She was about to ask another question when the shouting began outside. Socrates scrambled to his feet and put his paws up on the windowsill.

‘No again!’ said Phemie. ‘Is it another fight? They shouldny be up on the surface the now anyway.’ She strode across to the window as she spoke, and drew an indignant breath. ‘Would you believe it? There’s that fool Fleming in the place again, after Arbella told him no to come back here!’

‘Fleming?’ said Joanna apprehensively. ‘What’s he here for? Don’t let him — ’

‘Fleming?’ repeated Alys, hurrying to look. ‘I had thought him dead by now!’

‘Never you worry,’ said Phemie. ‘Jamesie has him in hand. That’s what the shouting’s all about.’ She looked at her sister, and then at Joanna. ‘I’ll get a word wi’ Jamesie. You stay here,’ she instructed, and left the room, without glancing at Alys.

There was a knot of men by the small building Phemie had identified as the office. Several were colliers or surfacemen, caked with silvery mud and brandishing their tools. In their midst, Jamesie Meikle and David Fleming stood face to face, the man Simmie nodding at the priest’s back while Fleming shouted incoherently at the collier, pointing wildly at the office, at the little chapel, up at the house. As Alys watched through the window Phemie came into sight, clumping purposefully over the cobbles on her wooden soles, but the men seemed not to notice her.

There was a tugging at her sleeve, and Alys turned to find Bel at her elbow, gesturing urgently towards the door.

‘You want me to go too?’ she asked. The girl nodded, and indicated by more gestures that she would stay with Joanna.

‘You’ll likely can stop them getting to blows,’ said Joanna, with a confidence which Alys found touching, and craned unsteadily to see out of the window. ‘Oh, my, what’s Jamesie — oh, what will he do? Please, will you go and stop them?’

Jamesie Meikle was still trying to be reasonable. As Alys approached, he was saying, ‘Our mistress forbade you these policies last time you were here. You shouldny be on her land at all, let alone trying to search the office where the tallies and the accounts are kept. We’d be well within our duties to fling you in the burn and leave you — ’

‘The law will support me,’ declared Fleming feverishly, ‘I’ll take the evidence to the Sheriff straight way, and he’ll see the right o’ my actions! I ha’ proof positive now of the witchcraft that’s being worked here, and one or all of these wicked women will — ’

‘We’ll ha’ no more of that,’ said one of the colliers, hefting his mell.

‘And as for you, Simmie Wilson,’ continued Jamesie, ‘I’d ha’ thought you’d more sense than turn up here poking your nose where this glaikit sumph tells you.’

‘Sumph, is it?’ howled Fleming. Alys studied him anxiously; she was astonished to see him on his feet, but it was clear his recovery was anything but complete. The man was trembling and sweating, hollow-eyed and hollow-cheeked, his clothes hanging from him as if he had lost half his weight. She could smell the pear comfits from where she stood.

‘Aye,’ Simmie was saying, ‘but I found what he said I’d find, which is proof o’ witchcraft, Jamesie Meikle, so what do you think of that?’

‘Proof? Aye, proof of your own soft-headedness,’ said someone.

‘There’s all the candles gone from the chapel,’ protested Simmie, ‘just as Davy here said I’d find, though he put new ones just the other week — ’

‘Is that what Agnes Brewster’s been burning?’ said another voice, to laughter.

‘Well, what d’you call this?’ said Simmie, goaded. He fetched a bundle out of the breast of his doublet and opened it out into an appalled spreading silence. Between the coal-blackened shoulders Alys saw as clearly as any of them what lay within the sacking. Four little mommets, clumsily modelled of white wax, clad in scraps of cloth and pierced with thorns through heart or head, three with bare crumbling waxen legs, the fourth in petticoats. Her heart sank. This was definite proof of witchcraft. But who — which of the people here — had made and hidden these?

For perhaps five breaths the silence hung, and then incongruously a lark burst into song over their heads. As if it was a signal, the man nearest to Simmie struck out, knocked the little figures to the ground, and stamped on them with a muddy boot, saying savagely, ‘Where’s yer proof now, Simmie Wilson? Show that to the Sheriff, won’t ye?’

The other men began shouting round him. Fleming threw himself forward with a cry of rage, scrabbling in the dirt for the fragments of wax, and Phemie, white and trembling, seized Jamesie Meikle’s elbow saying under the noise, ‘He made that up! Surely he made that up, he must ha’ made those things himself!’

Meikle turned to look at her, as some of the men laid large rough hands on Fleming, and Simmie held the sacking wrapper up above the mêlée saying indignantly, ‘No I never, I found them, they were up yonder hid in the thatch!’

‘Up where?’ demanded Phemie, but Alys, who had seen where he pointed, stepped back away from the group and set off round the end of the house and up the hill, the dog at her heels. One for Thomas Murray, she was thinking, one for David Fleming. And the others must be — yes, they must represent Gil and herself, newly constructed, the immediate reason for the absence of candles in the little chapel. And Gil had that terrifying dream. She shivered, crossed herself, and turned uphill, making for the new over wyndhous which Arbella had accounted for so meticulously. For the first time, she had begun to consider that there might be some foundation for Fleming’s persistent ideas, and it was an unpleasant thought.

Halfway up the slope, she found the two men who had accompanied her from Belstane were beside her.

‘What’s ado, mem?’ asked Steenie, still wiping ale from his mouth. He acknowledged Socrates’ greeting and added, ‘Davy Fleming was like to die yesterday, and now he’s up here shouting at the colliers, is it a miracle right enough?’

‘More like the fasting has helped him,’ said Alys, pausing to look over her shoulder at the group in the yard. As she watched Phemie spoke, distracting the men, and Fleming seized the chance and ducked away from the grasping hands round him, slipped into the colliery office and slammed the door. By the time the sound floated up to them Jamesie Meikle had already deployed three men to guard the little building, and was confronting a belligerent Simmie.

‘And what’s the stushie about?’ asked Henry at her other elbow.

‘Fleming has been searching the place for signs of witchcraft,’ said Alys.

‘Witchcraft?’ said Henry in alarm. ‘Here, if Beatrice Lithgo’s taken up for a witch, where am I to get supplies for dosing the horses?’

‘Embro?’ suggested Steenie. ‘Where are we going, mem?’